Thursday, September 20, 2012

Face 2 Face

At the event!

My Husband and I were recently asked to speak at our Pride Center.
We were part of a series called Face 2 Face, Making our Families.
We shared during an evening dedicated to domestic and international adoptions for our LGBT community.

On the panel was our Family, giving insights on our private adoption.
There was a Gay family there who had adopted their son from Latvia.
There was an international adoption specialist who works with children from Russia and the Republic of the Congo.
And finally an adoption specialist who works within our Florida community.

It was indeed amazing to see a room full of Gay and Lesbian couples and individuals seeking information on how to grow their families.

There were also a good amount of State and County workers there to get a sense of what our little community was up to.

I even recognized one of the adoption specialist from Childnet, our version of DCF sitting in the back row.They're attendance tells me that the rise of same-gendered adoptions is fixed on their radars.If their bosses are sending them out to events like these, it could only mean that need to gain undersatnding of our movement, and quickly!

There were also some great "firsts" on that panel.

The couple that adopted from Latvia had to apply as only one single man.
Only when the adoption was finalized and after a certain amount of time could they file for a second parent adoption here in the States making them both daddies.

Latvia still has great issue with the idea of a male adopting, they hold strongly the old traditional value that only a mother should raise a child.

The single male adoption was the first ever out of Latvia.
How wonderful was that, and what a precident he set making way for more men, many Gay, to pursue Latvia as an option.

And as many of you know my Husband and I made history here in our county as the first same-gendered couple to jointly adopt a baby, two daddies on his birth certificate from the onset.
Also precedent setting, and paving the way for other couples, attorneys and judges to use our case to make their own.

We are very proud of that fact.

It was a great night.
Many of the questioned revolved around the financial concerns surrounding adoption.
Some of the big issues, as you may know, regarding international adoptions are the travel cost.
You more than likely have to be "in country" at least once to deal with all the paper work and the handing over of the child(ren).
These, in country, visits can be anywhere from one week to one month depending.

Domestic adoptions come with all their own sets of concerns and variables.
Details that we were more than happy to share with the group.

We had brought our Son with us and by the time the event ended it was well beyond his usual 7:30 bedtime.
Which as you parents know meant overtired and a complete refusal to go to sleep! :)

By the time my Husband and I prepared to close our eyes our thoughts finally drifted to the event..
What did you think, I asked him?
he said he thought we had helped some people realize that they could and would be parents.

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About Me

henry amador is a leader, an artist, a traveller, a husband, a father, a healer, a life coach, a thinker, a gypsy, a pacifist, a lover, a yogi, a "buddha", a listener, a spaniard, a wedding officiant, a philosopher, a nudge, a writer, a fly-on-the-wall, a son, a dreamer, a shoe fanatic, a sage, a fashionable man-about-town, a storyteller, a man-of-action, an ego-maniac, a human, a nurturer, a beach bum, a worrier, a gardener, a mystic, a believer...and so much more.